Does Dropbox play nicely with iCloud Photo Library?

[Darren S.1]

There's nothing recent about this, but it looks like some people had problems in the past.

I only have one iCloud device (an iPhone) so duplicates from other devices won't be an issue like some people seem to have had. I'm being told I can save 26GB in storage space by enabling the iCloud Photo Library. One reason I've shied away from that until now is because it seems to me that if I take a photo and only the lower-res version is saved on my phone that is the version that will get uploaded to Dropbox. Am I correct, or will the full-size photo always get uploaded?

Any other problems people have encountered with this?

Thanks.

[Rich · Accepted solution]

Dropbox will upload whatever version of the photo is in your camera roll. Normally that's the original, unedited photo. If iCloud changes that somehow, and I don't see why that would happen, then Dropbox will upload whatever version of the photo is there.

This sounds more like a question for Apple, in that you're asking about iCloud and how it will impact the photos you take. Dropbox just uploads what's there, and has no control over how those files are stored on the device.

[Darren S.1]

Hi Rich. Apple are not famously verbose so I don't suppose asking them would help much 🙂

I was hoping someone here my have had direct experience. My understanding of iCloud Photo Library is this:

1. Take photo.

2. Full size photo is uploaded to cloud.

3. A cut down version appropriate to the screen size is kept on the device.

My concern is that if a Dropbox upload is not triggered (because I'm not on wifi for example) until after step 3, only the cut down version will be uploaded.

[Pixelwise]

I have the same question.

iCloud Photo Library, when you have the "Optimize Storage" option enabled, will keep a portion of the full-size images on your device, but the majority of them (assuming the size of the photo library is larger than the space available on the phone) are small, low-res thumbnails. When you tap on one of these thumbnails, iOS quickly downloads the higher-res version for viewing. This saves space while making all images available immediately. 

I would hope that Dropbox's photo upload would somehow temporarily download the original file, upload to Dropbox, then clean up those files once the process is complete. Anyone know more detail about how Dropox actually handles this?

[Mark]

Hi Pixelwise

It doesnt I'm afraid.

As Rich said Dropbox will only upload what is in your Photo Album at that time - if they are not actually there and just thumbnails or indexes Dropbox wont see them I'm afraid.